Pimp Your Work - Improving Your Work Day Efficiency

Innovation - Five Ways to Pimp Your Creativity

by Scot Herrick on October 11th, 2006

Companies continually need to create and innovate.

You see that all the time in the magazines, literature on business and chatting up management in the hallway, right?

Cracks me up.

You see, COMPANIES don’t innovate. PEOPLE innovate. People like you and I.

How creative are you in the workplace? Do you support your team’s efforts at coming up with ways that are better and make your work life easier? Or are you one of those Funkin’ Up Your Atmosphere?

Here’s what you can do to help the creativity of your work life and contribute to your company goals:

• Innovation is small. You should try for incremental improvements to what you are currently doing. Building a Pimpmobile is great, but doesn’t happen often. Instead, tell us how to Pimp our Wheels so they look like the great wheels they can be.
• Innovation is continuous. You don’t get to tell us how to Pimp our wheels and then walk away from the car. No, you need to think about how we can make the rest of the car body the envy of the blogosphere, the interior leather seats to die for and a sound system that will rock the planet.
• Innovation is failure. You can give us a great Pimp Tip for your work in the comments, we can try it and it can fail — and that’s OK. Innovation isn’t about the perfect score; instead, it’s about continuously trying.
• Innovation is fast. We want the ideas and we want them fast. Can we implement the ideas quickly? Can we try one today, one tomorrow and one the next day? If we can try them fast, we can learn quickly. If we set up a program with results a year from now, well, ah, what were we doing again? Now. Now is when we want to try.
• Innovation is relevant. If we’re brainstorming innovative ideas on how to Pimp Your Work, we won’t be too interested in how to Pimp Your House. Innovation is not brainstorming about anything that goes. Innovation is brainstorming about the issue at hand and coming up with innovative ways to solve the problem at hand. Focus. Not generalities.

So get creative already. But solve the issue at hand and have a good time doing it. That’s innovation.

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• Innovation is Small
• Innovation is Continuous
• Pimping Bookmarks: Creativity in the Workplace
• Darren’s series on Creativity–A must read
• The Cult of Innovation

POSTED IN: Cube life, General work pimps, Survival Skills